Ask DACS
May 2009

Moderated and reported by Jim Scheef.

Ask DACS is the regular Question and Answer session before the main presentation at the monthly General Meeting. We solicit questions from the floor and then ask for answers from other audience members. My role as moderator is to try to guide the discussion to a likely solution to the problem.

We had one question from before the meeting:

Q – I use Microsoft Outlook 2007 on Windows XP Pro with email accounts on Exchange 2003 plus various email providers like MSN and Yahoo. I have two logons on this machine, one is a regular machine account and the other is a domain account. When I open Outlook on the domain account, Outlook fails in a severe crash. Yet when I open Outlook when logged on the machine account, Outlook opens and runs normally and can access all the various email accounts. This setup worked for years using Outlook 2003 and continued to work using Outlook 2007 until about a week ago. What could cause this?

A – The mysterious questioner is, in fact, me and the machine is my primary laptop. The solution that worked was to open the Mail applet in Control Panel and create a new profile. This is not the solution I wanted as there are many favorites and other customization in the now corrupt profile. When creating the new profile, I had to use care to point the entry for the Exchange Server account to the old data file. Such files have an extension of .OST rather than the normal .PST. In my situation, I have both accounts pointing to the same .OST file so that the data is not duplicated on disk and updating one account updates both. I have not followed Rob’s advice completely and have not deleted the corrupt profile. I do not want to lose the customization if possible, so I’m slowly copying pieces of the corrupt profile to a new one using RegEdit. I’ll report what happens next month.

Q – I often want to email pictures or other content I find online. After highlighting the content I right-click and select “Mail to” (exact text may vary) and a window opens to compose a new email. The problem is that the window is for Outlook and I use Outlook Express. How do I get Outlook Express to open?

A – This is a common problem. When Outlook is installed, the installer sets it to be the “default email program” without asking if that is what you want. Of course you paid for Outlook so why wouldn’t you want to use it, but that is not the question. The easiest place to change the application that Windows knows as the default email program is in the “Set Program Access and Defaults” (SPAD) tool. By default this is in the Start menu, but if you have changed this, open the Add or Remove Programs applet in Control Panel. The SPAD tool will be at the bottom of the left-hand menu. Click the tool open the various to see what best fits your needs. I’m always in “Custom” where you can mix Microsoft with other options. Select the desired email program using the radio buttons. The check boxes seem to only affect the Microsoft programs that have been the subject of antitrust litigation. For example, unchecking Outlook Express will remove it from the Start menu.

Q – I use Acronis True Image to backup my hard drive. Recently I changed the location of the removable storage where the backups are stored. Now I must change the drive letter in True Image for each backup from E: to L:. How can I get True Image to recognize this change as permanent so backups will run more automatically? I have looked in the registry and found a key named ShadowCopy that seems to be the only possibility. Is this leading to a solution?

A – Suggestions started with uninstalling True Image and then reinstalling so it sees the new drive letters. Since there does not seem to be a way to change the drives recognized by True Image, it may be possible to change the drive letter for the backup drive to the “E:” that True Image expects. The Disk Manager part of Computer Management can change the drive letter of any drive. (Warning: Changing the letter of the drive labeled “System” will have serious repercussions.)

Q – I recently upgraded the RAM in my computer. Does anyone know of a place that will buy my old RAM modules?

A – My suggestion was to offer the memory modules (sometimes called “sticks”) on the DACS Community Forums. Smaller RAM sticks have little to no value because everyone wants more RAM and the smaller sticks take up the limited slots available on the system board.

Q – I just upgraded to Vista and cannot find the picture preview display that I preferred when using XP that shows both the file details and a larger-than-thumbnail view of the picture.

A – We have been severely limited in our ability to respond to such questions by the lack of a machine running Vista. We are trying to find a way to provide both Vista and Windows 7. This question requires a demonstration of the various ways to configure Windows Explorer in Vista.

Q – I’m having trouble connecting a new PDA (personal digital organizer) to my computer using USB. The PDA is not recognized. Have USB ports changed?

A – There have been no recent changes to USB technology. A member pointed out that many devices (cameras, storage devices, etc.) require that device drivers be installed on the computer before connecting the USB cable to the device. Once the drivers are installed, it should be possible to see all USB devices attached to the computer in Device Manager. We were able to approximate a possible solution on XP that should work in Vista by adding the date the picture was taken to file details. Then sort the list by that date and click the option to display in groups.

Q – I upgraded my Mac to the current version of Mac OS X and the performance is very slow. How can I remove the unwanted stuff to make it run better?

A – The audience quickly determined that the real issue is that the machine, an iMac G5 needs more RAM. The newer version of OS X needs more RAM than what came in a two-year old MAC. A RAM upgrade should give a noticeable improvement.


Questions for the upcoming meeting can be emailed to askdacs@dacs.org.

Disclaimer: Ask DACS questions come from members by email or from the audience attending the general meeting. Answers are suggestions offered by meeting attendees and represent a general consensus of those responding. DACS offers no warrantee as to the correctness of the answers and anyone following these suggestions or answers does so at their own risk. In other words, we could be totally wrong!

 


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